ABSTRACTS. 



1191 



xhe Technical Education Committees of County Councils. A careful 

 digest of the work done throughout the course, and illustrations are 

 given of the School Garden at Hale, Surrey. — W. G. 



Scolopendrium officinarum var. dsedalum. By R. Wehrhahn 

 (Die Gart. p. 93, 22/11/1902), with illustration).— A curious and 

 pretty rare form discovered by a German botanist, Mr. Wehrhahn, on 

 the Weser Mountains in Central Germany. — G. B. 



Semolina and Macaroni, Manufacture of. By Robert Skinner 

 (U.S.A. Dep. Agr. Bur. PL Ind, Bull 20, 1902; 5 plates).— A further 

 contribution to the subject of the creation of a native manufacture of 

 semolina and macaroni in America in the shape of a pamphlet by the 

 United States Consul- General at Marseilles. It contains the results of 

 interviews with several of the largest semolina and macaroni manufac- 

 turers on the Continent, and while impressing upon American farmers 

 what a large and increasing market there is in Europe for a really suitable 

 hard wheat, the writer reminds native millers that a large demand also 

 exists in Russia for American semolina, which, though hardly up to the 

 requirements of the French market, is in consequence obtainable at a 

 price more suited to the Russian buyer. He repeats the opinion of a well- 

 known semolina broker at Marseilles that Canadian so-called Wild Goose 

 wheat, of which 100,000 tons were shipped to Marseilles in 1901, is as 

 good as any macaroni wheat ever sold in that market, though at the same 

 time he quotes other experts to the effect that it is not quite up to the 

 best Russian hard wheat in the possession of gluten, and a footnote by 

 the Cerealist of the United States Department of Agriculture adds that 

 it is well known that Canadian Goose wheat is inferior to that grown in 

 North and South Dakota. 



The ancestral home of macaroni is Naples, and it was at first made 

 exclusively from the hard wheats grown in Sicily and in that part of 

 South Italy known as La Pouille. Gradually, however, Italian farmers 

 ceased to pay much attention to the cultivation of grain, and the manu- 

 facturers found at the same time a greatly increased demand for their 

 macaroni and a complete falling off in their supplies of native wheat. 

 Here, however, the town of Marseilles, always much occupied in the grain 

 -trade, came speedily to the rescue and supplied the Italians with semolina 

 manufactured from durum wheats imported from South Russia and 

 Algeria. 



To the preparation merely of semolina for the Italians followed 

 naturally the further process of turning it into macaroni, and this industry 

 has now become an important one not only at Marseilles but in other 

 parts of France. 



The French manufacturers made use at first of none but imported 

 durum wheat, but since the present French tariff imposed a duty on 

 wheat about ten years ago, there has been a steady increase in the 

 cultivation of what is called in France " Metadine " wheat ; that is, 

 wheat grown from durum seed, but which, in consequence of the un- 

 suitability of the soil and climate, loses its distinctive character. From 

 this wheat semolina is being more and more extensively produced, and, 



